Austin’s Okkervil River are, in the most overgeneralized and reductive fashion, under the all-encompassing “indie rock” umbrella. As much as I like to label myself a pop savant of sorts, I often try to downplay my love of, say, Iron & Wine around friends – that sort of thing smacks too often of that most dreaded of music fans, the snob who prefers pretentious music that you just can’t get down with, and as such I avoid it and we […]
Posts tagged "indie rock"
Bon Iver? Meet “Bon Iver”
Not totally sure I’m on team Bon Iver yet, but this site isn’t called “What the Blerd Likes”, so I’m here to give y’all the news whether my socks are getting knocked off or not. I will say that the multiple guest appearances on Kanye’s excellent My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy have put Justin Vernon and crew on my radar a lot more than he/they were before. I checked out For Emma, Forever Ago a couple months ago and just […]
Heading Down to “Georgia” with Band of Horses
Band of Horses just might be my favorite discovery of 2010. The Seattle band’s latest album, “Infinite Arms”, fuses Southern rock with sweeping orchestration and harmonies so tight they make the hair on my (not-exactly-infinite) arms stand up. I got the chance to catch them at an intimate record store performance two days before “Arms”, and I was blown away. BoH and Cee-Lo have been doing the Mutual Admiration Society thing for a couple of months now. The former Gnarls […]
Chart Stalker: The Power of Indie
“Indie Rock” is kind of a stupid term. “Indie” technically is shorthand for “independent” (as in not distributed by a major label), but most people see the word “indie” and think “hipster”. This leads to a bit of confusion. I mean, The Mars Volta record for a major label, and technically, Taylor Hicks and Elliott Yamin are “indie”. It should also probably be noted that most indie companies are actually owned by major labels. So we should probably think of […]